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Ford’s EVs, BlueCruise combine for better road trips | Ars Technica
Until a long-promised future replete with driverless cars arrives, we're stuck behind the wheels of our own vehicles. Autonomous driving is slowly getting more… autonomous in places, but for passenger cars that still feature steering wheels, we still need to keep our hands on the wheel and eyes on the road—if you're not driving a GM with SuperCruise or a Ford with BlueCruise, that is.
Currently available only in certain trims of Ford's first two battery-electric vehicles, the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, BlueCruise enables hands-free driving on over 130,000 miles of divided highways around the US. It's essentially Ford's Co-Pilot 360 driver-assistance system paired with a set of cameras inside the car that monitor the driver's eyes to make sure they're looking at the road.
I recently got to spend a week each with the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT and F-150 Lightning Platinum, both of which are equipped with BlueCruise. Those two weeks also coincided with a positive COVID test for my son, a freshman at the University of Iowa. As that university's COVID policy for positive tests boils down to "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," and I had my own (mild) bout about a month prior (and was double-boosted), I was dispatched to retrieve the boy so he could isolate at home.
The biggest chunk of the ~215-mile route between suburban Chicago and Iowa City is Interstate 88, which is arguably one of the least interesting stretches of the Interstate Highway System. Along with I-294 and I-80, it has been mapped by Ford and is covered by BlueCruise. The prospect of over 850 miles of boring, back-and-forth driving suddenly seemed less onerous.
(more at source)
Until a long-promised future replete with driverless cars arrives, we're stuck behind the wheels of our own vehicles. Autonomous driving is slowly getting more… autonomous in places, but for passenger cars that still feature steering wheels, we still need to keep our hands on the wheel and eyes on the road—if you're not driving a GM with SuperCruise or a Ford with BlueCruise, that is.
Currently available only in certain trims of Ford's first two battery-electric vehicles, the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, BlueCruise enables hands-free driving on over 130,000 miles of divided highways around the US. It's essentially Ford's Co-Pilot 360 driver-assistance system paired with a set of cameras inside the car that monitor the driver's eyes to make sure they're looking at the road.
I recently got to spend a week each with the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT and F-150 Lightning Platinum, both of which are equipped with BlueCruise. Those two weeks also coincided with a positive COVID test for my son, a freshman at the University of Iowa. As that university's COVID policy for positive tests boils down to "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," and I had my own (mild) bout about a month prior (and was double-boosted), I was dispatched to retrieve the boy so he could isolate at home.
The biggest chunk of the ~215-mile route between suburban Chicago and Iowa City is Interstate 88, which is arguably one of the least interesting stretches of the Interstate Highway System. Along with I-294 and I-80, it has been mapped by Ford and is covered by BlueCruise. The prospect of over 850 miles of boring, back-and-forth driving suddenly seemed less onerous.
(more at source)
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